Marketplace Briefing: Why Amazon discontinued its AI-powered Rufus chatbot for Alexa shopping agent

The move comes as tech companies race to turn AI chatbots into shopping assistants. OpenAI, Google and Perplexity have all introduced tools that help consumers research products and make purchases through conversational interfaces, while some retailers are striking deals with third-party AI platforms to sell products through chatbots. Some of those efforts have been underwhelming. Amazon is betting shoppers will prefer using an AI assistant built directly into its own store rather than third-party bots.

Amazon introduced Rufus in 2024 as an AI “expert shopping assistant,” the company said at the time, designed to answer product questions and recommend items. Since then, Amazon has steadily added more agentic capabilities to the tool, including automated deal tracking and purchasing, even as Rufus remained in beta. Last month, Amazon said monthly active users for Rufus were up 115% year over year, while engagement had increased 400%. CEO Andy Jassy also said Amazon was aiming for Rufus to become “the best shopping assistant anywhere.”

“It’s a graduation party for Rufus,” said Juozas Kaziukėnas, an independent e-commerce analyst who tracks Amazon closely. “Amazon used to call it a beta feature, and now that beta tag is gone.”

Rufus was used by 300 million customers in 2025 and helped drive nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales, Amazon previously disclosed when it reported earnings in February. Amazon says customers who use Rufus are 60% more likely to complete a purchase. 

At the same time, Amazon has also been rebuilding Alexa around generative AI. Earlier this year, the company rolled out Alexa+, an upgraded version of its voice assistant designed to handle more conversational and multi-step requests. Amazon previously told Modern Retail that customers make three times more purchases using Alexa+ devices than the original version of Alexa.

Kaziukėnas said the two products increasingly overlapped, making the split branding difficult to justify. “They have two assistants that seemingly can do similar things, and yet they’re two separate things,” he said. “It makes a lot of sense to be just one.”

Modern Retail previously reported that Rufus was notably absent from Jassy’s annual shareholder letter, even though the 5,000-word memo focused heavily on Amazon’s AI ambitions. Alexa, by contrast, was mentioned six times throughout the letter.

In practice, the new Alexa for Shopping experience looks very similar to Rufus. The revamped tool largely packages together features that the company had already been testing or gradually rolling out over recent months. Those include AI-generated search responses, product comparisons, personalized shopping guides and automated shopping tasks.

One notable difference is that Amazon is now surfacing the assistant much more prominently inside the search bar itself. Previously, shoppers had to click on a chat bubble icon to summon Rufus. Moving forward, those logos will be replaced with a cursive A icon, and shoppers will be able to ask questions directly in Amazon’s search bar. Amazon will provide AI-generated summaries at the top of search results and on product detail pages.

Amazon search remains some of the most valuable real estate in e-commerce. The bulk of the company’s ad revenue comes from sponsored listings that appear within traditional search results. Amazon executives have said that conversational shopping could ultimately create more advertising opportunities. During Amazon’s latest earnings call, Jassy said AI interfaces create “multiple opportunities to surface relevant products to customers, many of which will be organic and some of which will be sponsored,” he said.

Amazon has largely resisted opening its marketplace to outside AI shopping agents. Jassy has said the company expects to eventually partner with third-party agents, though Amazon continues to block many bots from accessing its site. Meanwhile, Amazon has launched its own agentic shopping features like “Buy for Me,” which can purchase products from other retailers’ websites on a customer’s behalf. Some retailers criticized the feature, saying they never opted into the program, Modern Retail previously reported.

Kaziukėnas said the rebrand gives Alexa a second chance to become a true shopping assistant after years of limited adoption in voice commerce. Only 2% of shoppers who own Alexa-enabled devices had used the voice option to make a purchase in 2018, The Information reported at the time. Amazon disputed those numbers. Kaziukėnas also said the rebrand would likely increase adoption of the assistant because consumers are already far more familiar with the Alexa name than Rufus.

“They’re folding it into a brand that I think is ultimately a much stronger brand,” he said. “Alexa is something that is attached to Amazon and something that people are aware exists.”

What I’m reading

• EBay rejected GameStop’s $56 billion takeover bid. (Reuters)
• Amazon is launching deliveries in 30 minutes or less in dozens of U.S. cities. (CNBC)
• Companies start getting tariff refunds after Supreme Court decision. (CNBC)

What we’ve covered

• Here comes the brand: Inside the business of influencer weddings
• Temu wants to sell you a steak now
• Amazon offers non-sellers more of its supply chain services